by Tyler Dilts
“You haven’t been to class in a while,” she said. “We’ve been worried about you.” She gave him a guilt-inducing eyebrow raise, but he wasn’t having any of it.
“I can’t come no more.”
“Can we step inside?” she asked.
“No, my moms is sleeping.” He opened the dead bolt with a twist of his hand and stepped out onto the small concrete porch, pulling the door softly closed behind him.
“She working nights again?” Jen asked.
“No.” He looked down at his Reeboks.
“What, then?”
“She had to quit her job.”
“Why?”
“She got cancer.”
Jen was silent.
“Her pancreas and liver,” he said. “She got to have chemotherapy three times a week.”
Jen said, “I’m sorry, Rudy.”
“So I gotta work now, and I can’t come to class no more.”
“You have a job?”
“Yeah.”
She gave him time to say more. He didn’t.
“Who you working for, Rudy?”
“Some guys.”
“Some guys?”
“Some guys my brother hooked me up with.”
“I can help you find a job,” she said. “A real one.”
He wrestled with his reply. His respect for her was obvious, and he chose his words deliberately, as if being careful not to offend. “You know she don’t got no papers, right? They didn’t never give no amnesty to the Vietnamese, so we don’t get no help with the doctor, okay?”
Jen nodded.
“No disrespect, Sensei, you gonna get me some job in Burger King or Wendy’s? Maybe I’m real lucky and I be busing tables down at Shoreline Village? I appreciate it, I do.” He looked her straight in the eye. “But I’m gonna take care of my sisters and pay for my mom’s doctor on minimum wage and tips?”
It was Jen’s turn to look at her shoes.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her.
“Me too,” she said. “Me too.”
When we were back in the car, Jen waited a long time before starting the engine.
“Danny, you check out her e-mail yet?” asked Pat Glenn, squeezing a neon lime ball in his hand.
“No, why? You find something?”
“Maybe. You should check it. Messages going back a while to this Waxler guy.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Pretty standard cyberdating stuff. All the usual, getting-to-know-you, toeing-the-water kind of shit. He gets a little weirded out at the end when she cuts him loose. Nothing that screams psycho killer or anything, though.”
“Can I get into her account to have a look?”
“No need. I printed it all out for you.” He handed me a manila folder with a dozen or so pages inside. “And that’s her screen name on the first page, if you want to check it out.”
“We didn’t, by any chance, get that court order yet, did we?” I asked.
“No,” he said, dropping the ball into a large plastic bowl filled with Happy Meal toys and turning back to his monitor. “Kincaid didn’t want to roust a judge on the weekend for it. Says he’ll have it today, though.”
“Do me a favor? Call me as soon as it comes through, okay?”
“Why?”
“Jen and I are hitting Waxler at lunch today. Don’t want to use anything from the e-mail until we’re official.”
Jen was at her desk when I came in. “Take a look at this,” she said as I sat down across from her.
“What is it?”
“It’s our best guess so far as to Beth’s last three days.”
I looked at the paper-clipped sheets she slid across the top of my desk. They contained a straightforward, chronological list, assembled primarily from phone, computer, and bank records, cross-referenced with witness statements and any other information that might help to track Beth’s actions during the last seventy-two hours of her life. Nothing stood out as being unusual or out of place.
When I finished reading, I looked up at Jen. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Lot of time online. Lot of e-mail. We ought to talk to Pat about that.”
“He’s already on it,” I said, holding up the file folder he’d just given me. “These are all the messages back and forth between her and Waxler.”
“We have a warrant?”
“No comment.”
Jen raised her eyebrows. “Anyone talk to Kincaid yet?”
“According to Pat, he’s working on it.”
“Let me talk to him. Maybe I can hurry it up.” She brushed the hair off her forehead as she picked up her phone and dialed his extension. I wanted to make a smart-ass comment, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.
I sat at my desk, waiting for Jen to come back from Kincaid’s office and reading through Beth and Daryl’s correspondence. Apparently they met online in a chat room book club discussion of The Poisonwood Bible and continued their exchange through e-mail and instant messages, of which, unfortunately, we had no record. Still, though, Waxler seemed sincere in his praise of the book, and only after the second e-mail in the folder did he begin to expand the scope of their conversation by inquiring about things other than her views on the Kingsolver book in particular and other literary matters in general.
His first question was simple and direct: “In your profile you mention that you’re an English teacher. What grade do you teach?” He was either very patient, or he really wasn’t just looking for an easy score. After addressing a few points he had made about the novel, Beth answered his question simply and directly—“high school”—and closed the message with “talk to you later, Beth.” Daryl kept it cool, though, and peppered each message with a personal inquiry or two, and after the third letter, Beth was doing the same.
Gradually, they shared more and more. Daryl talked about raising a son on his own, Beth about teaching high school. The exchange was tentative and delicate on both their parts. A person less cynical than myself might have found it endearing, even a bit sweet. In his seventh e-mail, Daryl included his phone number and asked her if she wanted to get together for a cup of coffee. She took longer than usual to respond, but after two days, she agreed. The next few notes were short and simple, “had a nice time, talk to you soon” kinds of things. But near the end of September, Beth dropped the hammer:
Subject: RE: :-)
Date: 09/30 11:17:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: Lizbeth 67
To: WaxOn
Daryl:
I’m sorry to tell you like this, but I won’t be able to see you anymore. You are a very kind and sweet man, but I’m not able to give you what you need and deserve. We’re in different places, and looking for different things. I wish you nothing but the best, and I hope you are able to understand.
Sincerely,
Beth
Daryl kept trying, though, with four unanswered e-mails, each just a bit more pleading and desperate than the one before, asking for another chance, some reconsideration, before he finally gave up around the third week of October—just less than two weeks before the murder.
What was going through his mind? He didn’t seem angry in the messages, just hurt and a little pathetic. How desperate might he have become in those twelve days? We were going to have to dig. I made a note to request a warrant for Daryl’s phone records to see how many telephone calls went along with those e-mails.
I thumbed through the pages one more time, scanning the text for something I might have missed the first time through. Looking at Waxler’s final message, I saw something I didn’t catch on my first reading. He wrote, “But if this is what you really want, then alright, I’ll have to accept it, and we’ll both just have to live with the consequences of your decision.”
It was only when I took that line out of context, separating it from the compliment that preceded it (“Beth, you are an amazing woman”) and the well-wishing closing (“Have a beautiful life”) that I saw the implic
ations of Waxler’s words and the veiled threat they contained. The message might have been only an instance of some simple and understandable passive-aggressiveness—or it could have been something more. If Jen ever came back from Kincaid’s office, I thought, we might be able to find out.
FOURTEEN
As we wound through the Palos Verdes hills, ten minutes from Waxler’s house, I said to Jen, “Call him again.”
“We just called,” she said, slowing the Explorer to look both ways as we approached a reflective yellow caution sign that showed a stick-figure horse and rider crossing the road. The rider looked to me like a spoiled thirteen-year-old girl, but I may have been reading too much into it.
“Call him anyway,” I said.
“He said he’d call as soon as he talked to the judge.”
“What’s taking him so damn long?” I looked at my watch. “He’s had three hours.”
“Why are you so uptight?”
“I’m uptight?”
She took her eyes off the road just long enough to shoot me a look of disbelief.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just want to be able to front him with the e-mail if we need to. Shit, what else do we have?” I watched the trees blur outside the passenger window as we passed them by. She didn’t call Kincaid again.
A silver Audi A8 and an iridescent yellow New Beetle were parked next to each other at the end of Waxler’s driveway. When Jen pulled to a stop next to the VW, there was still enough driveway width for at least two cars on either end of the row. One of the three garage doors was open, revealing enough gym equipment to stock a small health club.
As Jen and I got out of the Explorer, I looked inside the garage and saw the likely owner of the Bug—a spiky-haired young man about D.J.’s age. Trying just a bit too hard to look cool, he wore a sleeveless T-shirt and knee-length shorts above his Converse Chuck Taylors. The barbed-wire tattoo encircling his wiry biceps stretched like a black rubber band as he spotted D.J., who was straining to bench-press an Olympic bar with a twenty-five-pound plate on each end. We stood on the driveway until he grunted out another rep or two and then put the bar in its cradles.
I leaned against the frame of the door and took a look around. The garage was large, even by Palos Verdes standards. Space for six cars, with spotless shelving, cabinetry, and workbenches running all around the perimeter. On the far end, behind the closed doors, were three more cars—a Range Rover, a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, and an Acura RSX. Wasn’t hard to figure out whose was whose. In the far corner stood a large refrigerator, the glossy black panels on its doors reflecting the shrunken images of the cars.
The nearest third of the space, though, was devoted to the fitness equipment. A Trotter treadmill, a Life Fitness elliptical trainer, and a Concept2 rowing machine lined the wall on the left. Opposite them stood a full complement of Cybex strength-training equipment, including a seven-pulley machine; flat, incline, and decline benches; and full sets of both dumbbells and free weights. In the corner, on a chain attached to a rafter, hung a seventy-pound Everlast heavy bag. I don’t know why, but I wanted to see Jen shove the two of them out of the way and show them how it’s done. I knew for a fact that she could easily bench more than twice what D.J. was doing, without even using a spotter. I stopped and tried to remember the last time I’d bench-pressed anything at all. What had it been? Four years? Five?
“D.J.,” Jen said as he sat up on the bench. “How’s it going?”
As she stepped toward the two guys, their eyes widened. “Okay,” D.J., said, grinning and trying not to be obvious about tightening the ropy muscles in his thin arms. “How about you, Detective?”
“Just fine. Who’s your friend?” Jen asked. She nodded toward the other teenager. The kid quickly raised his gaze, probably hoping not to be caught ogling her hips. He didn’t quite make it in time.
“Max,” he said, extending his hand to Jen. “Max Porter.”
Jen took his hand and looked up at him. “Nice to meet you.” She gripped his hand and waited for him to let go first, then turned back to D.J. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s inside. Living room, I think.” D.J. sounded disappointed, like maybe he’d been hoping she’d want to hang out and talk shop for a while. “I think he’s waiting for you. Just go through there and go down the hall to the left. You can’t miss him.”
I wasn’t sure that either one of them had noticed me at all until D.J. gave me half a nod as I followed Jen through the door into the kitchen hallway. Behind us, the weights clanked as D.J. started another set. A few yards down the hall, Jen stopped and looked at the kitchen. It impressed her even more than it had me when I’d seen it on our last visit.
“Damn,” she said, looking out over the Pacific.
“It’s like the Food Network and HGTV all rolled into one.”
“Must be nice.” She shrugged off the view and continued down the hall. Thirty paces later, the tile walkway opened into an expansive living area with a large brick fireplace and ceilings that stretched upward through the second floor and all the way to the exposed roof beams twenty-five feet above our heads.
There were two men in the room, and even though we’d never met either of them, it wasn’t hard to tell who was who. Daryl sat on a dark brown leather sofa that seemed tiny in the large room. Next to him on the sofa, reaching forward and placing a highball glass on a ceramic coaster on the marble-topped coffee table, sat a man in a charcoal three-button suit, complete with burgundy power tie and salt-and-pepper temples. The lawyer didn’t seem small.
“Hello, Daryl,” I said.
“Hi,” he said. He was wearing light-colored khakis and an untucked white polo shirt with a dark red stripe across the chest. The outfit, together with his narrow shoulders and wide ass, reminded me of a bowling pin. His curly brown hair was a bit too long for the style in which he wore it. With one surprisingly deft motion, he pushed his glasses back up his nose and wiped the hair away from his eyes. He stood up and stuck out his hand. I took it.
“I’m Detective Beckett,” I said, putting a little extra muscle into my grip, “and this is Detective Tanaka.” She shook his hand too.
“This is my attorney,” Daryl said, raising his shoulders. “I didn’t expect him to come, but when I told him what was going on, he insisted.”
“Detectives,” the lawyer said. He leaned forward a bit but couldn’t be bothered to stand up. “Trevor Wells. A pleasure,” he added. With his dull, nasal monotone, he made sure we understood it was anything but.
Now, the very first thing I’d do if I knew I were about to be questioned in a murder investigation would be to lawyer up. I would not say a single word to anyone without the benefit of legal counsel. Not a peep. Most of my detective colleagues would agree with me on this. So it might seem surprisingly counterintuitive that the first thing we cops suspect when someone brings a lawyer to an interview is that the person must have something to hide. What, I wondered, did Daryl have to hide? Maybe just some of the standard-issue skeletons in the closet that always seem to swarm the wealthy. Maybe something else? But then again, most of the cops I know have a thing or two they wouldn’t mind keeping under the covers themselves.
At any rate, the lawyer reduced the potential value of our interview to very little if we were lucky or to nothing if we weren’t. Any question we really hoped to find an answer for would now, in all likelihood, not even be asked. There wouldn’t be any strikes for us—not even a spare. But we gave it a shot anyway.
We all sat down, Daryl and Wells in the same positions on the sofa they’d been in before, and Jen and I in matching chairs across the coffee table from them. Jen flipped open her spiral-bound notebook, and I took a small tape recorder out of my pocket. “Do you have any objections to our recording this conversation?” I asked. I figured that since Wells would make sure we didn’t stray from the straight and narrow, we might as well have the interview verbatim.
Daryl looked at his lawyer, who gave his head a single small shake to eac
h side. “No,” Daryl said. “I guess it’s okay.” I pushed the red record button and stated the date, time, and location and identified the parties present.
“All right,” Jen said. “Mr. Waxler, how would you characterize your relationship with Elizabeth Williams?”
Daryl glanced at Wells, who gave him half a nod. “We were close.” He squinted at the lawyer. “Friends,” he said, “close friends.”
Jen pushed a little harder. “Would you characterize your relationship with Ms. Williams as one of a romantic nature?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly—”
Wells cut him off. “No,” he said. “Mr. Waxler and Ms. Williams were not sexually involved.”
“Is that right, Daryl?” Jen asked.
When he nodded and said yes, his hair fell across his forehead. His hand was a little less certain this time as he wiped his fingertips back across his temple and tried to tuck the hair behind his ear.
“Did you want to be?” I asked.
Daryl looked surprised, but he was learning the game quickly. He let his legal counsel answer for him. “That question,” Wells said, his voice resonant with feigned indignation, “is neither appropriate nor relevant.”
With the possible exception of Daryl, everyone knew that the question actually was both relevant and appropriate, as the answer might lay the foundation of a motive for Daryl. We didn’t push the point, though. Arguing with a lawyer is about as good an idea as feeding an alligator raw beef from your palm.
I was ready to give up, but Jen kept going. “Can you tell us your whereabouts on the evening of Friday, November fourth?”
“I was out…” Daryl paused and checked in with Wells, who took over and finished his sentence.
“Out of town,” the lawyer said. “I know you’re already well aware of the credit card records that indicate—”
“With all due respect, Trev,” I said, “those records only indicate the whereabouts of Daryl’s credit card, not the whereabouts of Daryl himself.”